


It Hurts to Remember All the Good Times

by glassessay



Category: Mamma Mia! (Movies)
Genre: "rosie deserved better" the fic, Multi, me living my bliss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 11:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassessay/pseuds/glassessay
Summary: The next morning, she wakes up.A history of Rosie Mulligan, second choice.





	It Hurts to Remember All the Good Times

_2005_

The next morning, she wakes up.

Bill is beside her, sleeping as deeply as he ever does on land, breathing evenly. If she had been a different kind of writer—or twenty-five years younger—she might have said his chest rose and fell like the tide he belonged in.

She writes cookbooks, though—and this is a recipe for disaster.

Bill and Harry each only end up being able to stay the one day, and two early flights to Stockholm and Tokyo means they're leaving the island that night. There are, of course, the requisite goodbyes and promises from both to return and meet their soon-to-be-grandchild. Afterwards, Bill turns to her and smiles that stupid, heartbreaking smile that had gotten her in this mess in the first place.

"I've got a book signing in London in a month," he says. "I'd love to see you."

"I—" she starts, then breathes deeply. How, exactly, does this sentence end? _I was drunk last night_ or _I'll be there_ or _I don't think this is a good idea_ or maybe _I wish I'd ever believed it when you said you loved me_.

"I'll check my schedule." she says, and kisses him goodbye.

*

_1967_

Rosie's first love is clever Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter on a show she's not supposed to be up late enough to watch.

Her second love is Ricky Johnson, who had helped her to the nurse’s office when she'd cut her knee open on the playground. She spends that weekend wobbling around making plans for their life-long future together, two kids and a border collie, in love forever and ever.

The next Monday he laughs at the dress her mom picked out for her. Rosie cries half of lunch time away and swears off stupid boys for the rest of her life. That oath lasts all of two weeks before Dean Smith asks to share her crayons and she falls head over heels for his artistic talent and brown eyes.

*

_1978_

Rosie's not—well, she's used to being second choice, is all. Oxford had been the first big thing she'd gotten because of her own accomplishments instead of just happening to be around when someone else fell through. And then, with Donna and Tanya, Rosie was finally part of a whole instead of an after-thought inclusion. Even if she ended up being part of _and the Dynamos_ , that was more because of the alliteration than anything else.

Rosie loves them, loves their personalities and friendship, loves how free she feels with them; like the clumsy, loud, unadulterated version of herself is not only good enough, but more than worth knowing.

If she sometimes thinks about how potential boyfriends only turn to her if Donna and Tanya are busy, how maybe she'd be the interesting, pretty one if they weren't around to be compared to, well, the twist of guilt in her stomach is punishment enough.

She first meets James in an elective she's taking on creative writing. When, two weeks into the course, he finally turns around to introduce himself and ask if she's heard about an open-mic night at the local club that weekend, her first thought is that he's utterly gorgeous. Her second, based on the cut of his shirt and the brand of watch he's wearing, is that he'll love Tanya.

Donna and the Dynamos are, of course, the closing act to the open-mic night, which means the three of them get the chance to nurse some drinks before going on, and Rosie gets to see the reason James brought up the whole event.

"He's in my writing elective," she says, gesturing at the stage with her pint.

"Tall, dark, and melancholy?" Tanya asks and Rosie nods.

"He's kind of a bummer," Donna says, scribbling on a drink napkin. "Could do with a better beat." Rosie shrugs and sips her beer. Honestly, she agrees.

James finds her at the bar after the show, trying and failing to wave down the bartender. She's still in her whole getup, but apparently even platforms and glittery spandex isn't enough to catch the bartender's attention.

"I didn't know you were a Dynamo," James shouts over the music at her. "Now I feel a bit of an idiot for asking if you knew about this."

"It's the outfit and the makeup," she hollers back. "Makes it much harder to be recognized than you'd think."

James laughs, buys her drink, and spends the rest of the night being unfailingly attentive, even once Donna and Tanya arrive in a whirl of color and curls. When he asks her out for a drink next weekend, she says yes. And she keeps saying yes until it’s a month before graduation, they’re living out of each other’s pockets, and James tells her they need to talk.

“I’ve gotten a job offer in Paris,” he says.

She beams at him. “That’s wonderful!” And it is—Paris is a beautiful city, the food is, of course, wonderful, and she’s sure to prefer Paris with James over living a country away from him. It’s _Paris_ , and it feels like an adventure.

James grimaces, and Rosie realizes that maybe it _isn’t_ wonderful, exactly.

*

_1979_

They graduate, and Rosie rattles around the old apartment until Donna calls her and Tanya and says she's booked them a gig in Greece, and oh, also, she's fallen in love with an architect who helped her save a horse in a thunderstorm.

It's pretty typical of Donna, all things considered, and Rosie's just happy to have something to do.

Then, of course, are the revelations Sam-bloody-Carmichael was engaged to a different woman, Donna's been sleeping in a broken-down farmhouse, and the, hand-to-god, most handsome man Rosie's ever seen is a champion Scandinavian sailor and already doggedly interested in Donna.

The less said about that and the more about cake, the better.

*

_2005_

Next month and the book signing Bill had mentioned creeps closer every time she remembers to check. Not that she forgets, exactly, but she tries to limit herself to worrying about it only once a day.

Rosie stares at the emailed invitation and sighs the long, draining kind of sigh that sounds more like a deflating balloon than a human being.

She books her tickets the next day and spends the weekend Bill is in London listening to Italians bicker about wine. It’s more therapeutic than it has any right to be.

*

_1983_

Meredith is the kind of secret a girl can’t afford to keep. Not in 1983, at least.

Oh, but she is something else entirely, a drumbeat Rosie was always just a little too slow to match, a meteoric rise she only intersected by chance.

Mer takes her to a bar full of stocky women who don’t blink an eye at Rosie’s haircut, all of whom look surer of themselves and what they want from life than she thinks she’ll ever be. Meredith fits in with them, a rocketing force of nature that carries Rosie in her wake, a life and a journey she never hoped for herself but is so viscerally thrilled to be a part of.

She also takes Rosie to the cinema, where they watch artsy films and hold hands in the dark of the back row. In another life, they might’ve made like the other couples nearby and snogged—but this is this life, and holding hand is the most they risk when in public.

In private, though, in private is where Rosie lets herself love and be loved. She cooks ridiculously extravagant meals that the two of them eat sitting on her living room floor and sings, nigh constantly, just because Meredith likes to hear her.

Mer has big, beautiful dreams for a future full of self-love and harmony, and Rosie wants a place in those dreams. She wants to be free, she wants to stand at Meredith’s side, and, more than anything, she wants to be someone’s first choice. She thinks she has that with Meredith, and that makes her feel like the sun is shining out of her chest.

She tells Tanya and Donna, because she couldn’t keep this from them, doesn’t want to, and is guiltily relieved when the both of them take her newly-understood sexuality in stride. It gives her some peace, buys her some patience, but she never tells her parents.

She can’t. She won’t.

Meredith understands, but Mer has always been beyond simple things like loving people who don’t love her for everything she is. Rosie’s spent her entire life putting up with half-love from nearly everyone, and this isn’t a tie she can just cut.

They don’t move in together, they don’t meet each other’s families, they don’t move beyond only holding hands and only in the darkness. Rosie thinks it’s enough, that the point of the thing is who she and Mer are to each other behind closed doors, but Meredith disagrees.

“I can’t keep living like this! I understand if you’re not ready, Rose, but _I am_. And I can’t live my entire life in the shadows—even for you.” Her green eyes are shining, face twisted in a way that makes Rosie’s heart hurt, and she realizes that Meredith is right. She _shouldn’t_ have to live in the dark, not with her bright dreams and impossible promise, not for Rosie. Not even for the world.

Rosie lets her walk away because there’s nothing else she can do.

*

_1989_

The ring on her finger is not the giant, glittering thing Tanya had and returned, nor is it the weightless freedom Donna found at the edge of the world. It is small and silver, with little more than a chip of a gemstone in it, but Archie’s father had given it to his mother, and now Archie has given it to her.

_Engaged_ has a funny sort of sound to it, a falling rhythm made for some power-ballad Rosie will never write.

Archie is more-or-less exactly the kind of man she always expected to end up with: quiet, with glasses and a privately wicked little smile she always feels special to have witnessed.

He proposes on her birthday while they’re walking home from dinner. He kneels down in a park, takes out the little box, and asks her to be his wife. She says yes, smiling dopily when he puts the ring on her finger and kisses her sweetly.

They tell their parents, their friends, they move in together, start planning a wedding, and then—

And then one weekend when she’s making breakfast, Archie asks her if she’s happy.

“Of course I am,” she smiles quickly, “aren’t you?”

She turns back to the pan. There’s a perfect time to flip the bacon, and she’s not about to let it burn. What kind of a cookery writer would she be, if she let her bacon burn?

“No,” Archie says behind her.

Rosie turns, blinking at him. “No? No what?”

“No, I’m not happy.” Archie sighs, pulling off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. “I don’t think either of us is.”

“Archie—”

He cuts her off, eyes distant. “Is this what you wanted from your life, Rosie? Am I what you wanted?”

She is standing on the edge of a gaping precipice, rock crumbling away beneath her feet. What is she to do, but say: “Of course I want you, what are you talking about?”

He takes a deep breath, fiddling with the forks on the table. “My mother and father are very happy together. They always have been. They argued, of course, but only in a way that led to compromise. That made them better. When I was little, the only thing I wanted from life was someone who looked at me the way they looked at each other. Someone who—someone who I could share every part of me with, and them with me, and we’d only be better because of it.”

The bacon is burning. Rosie turns around to flip it, panicking.

“What did you want, Rosie?” Archie asks, imploring.

She wanted to be someone important, to write books, to run across the world, to change lives and live gloriously and be the kind of person that seizes every moment of every day. She wanted to fly to the moon, to join a band and play sold-out venues, to make her mark on the world and be remembered as a legend. She wanted to fall in love—with herself.

“I wanted to do wonderful things,” she says. “To be someone wonderful.”

“I’m sorry, Rosie.”

“You’re sorry?” she repeats, pulse beating hot in her throat.

“You’re always—it’s like you’re always looking out the window, looking for something more.” His glasses glint in the morning light that spills into the house. “I want to be enough for whoever I marry, Rosie, and I don’t feel like I am for you.”

There isn’t much to say to that, and still be telling the truth.

*

_1990_

When she finds it in herself to tell her best friends about the failure of her engagement, Donna tells her to come to the island. The edge of the world seems a fitting place to forget her troubles, so Rosie goes. Packs her things in a bag, buys a one-way ticket, and leaves for Kalokairi.

The sun is bright, the water sparkling, and every breeze across her face is a reminder of what she would’ve had and might’ve lost. Donna meets her at the port, with a little scrap of blonde hair that is ten-year-old Sophie, missing teeth and filled with joy.

The island is the same paradise as it was in ’79, though Donna’s hotel is in better shape than the broken-down barn she remembers. There are guest rooms, even, with downy beds and gauzy curtains and nearly enough water pressure. Donna treats her to fresh fruit and warm bread and a seemingly endless supply of wine.

Rosie loves her, and not just for the wine.

“So,” Donna starts as they watch Sophie play among the grass, “tell me what’s wrong.”

Rosie hates her a little, too.

“I thought I already did. My bloody fiancé broke off our engagement and I haven’t quite figured out how to live entirely off cake.”

Donna says nothing, just gives her a pointed look. Rosie scowls into her glass. In the distance, Sophie spins in wild circles.

Rosie sighs. “He said that neither of us was happy and that I was… looking for something that wasn’t him.”

“He was right,” Donna says, and Rosie makes a face. “He was boring, Rosie. You’re better than boring.”

“I know. But—I thought he was mine.”

Because isn’t that what it all comes down to? She had wanted a love that was all hers, and she had thought Archie little enough to give it to her. Maybe that made her a selfish wreck of a woman, but that didn’t stop it from being true. She had given up, somewhere, on the kind of endless fairytale love she saw in movies and books, and had hoped that in settling she’d get someone who would be too terrified of losing her to risk letting her go.

She just—she had wanted a love that was _hers_ , not something recycled from a past infatuation, to not have to wait around until someone decided they liked the reality of her better than the fantasy of someone else. Because isn’t that what she does, over and over? Wait around until someone deems her good enough?

Wait around until _she_ decides she’s good enough?

Donna and Tanya were wanderlust and ambition given human form, but at least they always knew who they were. Knew their worth, that they were miles above people that tried to make them small, that there was nothing in the world so wonderful being their whole selves.

Rosie had never had that self-assurance. Maybe she was more reliable, more solid, more present—but only on the outside. Only ever on the outside. Underneath it all she was still a little girl, picked last enough times that she was convinced it was all she deserved and anything above that was out of her reach.

Maybe she is allowed more than that, if only from herself.

*

_2006_

“I mentioned a book signing, the last time we were here.”

Rosie looks away from where she’s staring at the baby—at _baby Sophie’s_ _baby_ —to see Bill, standing to her right.

“Yes,” she says, straightening her spine and blinking back to the present. “I’m afraid I couldn’t make it.”

He leans against the wall, the picture of perfect nonchalance. She knows him too well to think his knees won’t start hurting if he stays like that too long. “Off sampling cuisine in parts unknown?”

She smiles wanly. “Arguing wine with Italians.”

“I can see why you couldn’t tear yourself away.” He smiles sardonically, and she wonders at the fact that it’s still beautiful. “Pity, I was hoping we could make it a double signing.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, bemused. “I’m not sure there’s much overlap in our audiences.”

“Well, it was only really for the one copy.” Bill holds out her latest book, the one she wrote most of during their relationship. “I’ve not quite managed to get it signed,” he says. The color of the title text matches the blue of his eyes, she realizes with a muted jolt.

“Oh.”

He pulls a pen from somewhere, holding it out to her with a little grin. She takes it, and the book, and flips through to the dedications page.

_For Sophie_ , it says, _and Donna and Tanya and Bill_.

“I miss her too,” he says, “more than anything.”

She just smiles, more a lifting of the corners of the mouth, and signs the book. “Well,” she starts, bright and brisk and entirely fake. “This is a lovely party, but I’m absolutely knackered. Have a good night, Bill.” She hands the book back and turns away, leaving Bill standing confused and alone.

_Bill_ , she had signed the book. _We both miss her more than we ever missed each other_.

**Author's Note:**

> me: leaves mammia mia 2 yelling "rosie deserved better!"  
> also me: takes literal months to write this
> 
> Uh anyway so the Mammia Mia timeline is an absolute mess, please [read about it](https://www.avclub.com/my-my-what-the-hell-is-up-with-the-mamma-mia-timeline-1827737255).
> 
> Come watch me yell about increasingly niche interests over [here](https://glass-es-say.tumblr.com/).


End file.
